Michigan v. Thomas’s Empirical Analysis
1982
Citation profile
182 federal appellate · 55 district · 332 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 718 later decisions (14 by the Supreme Court) — most recently November 2025 · most notably United States v. Johns (1985), State v. Badgett (1986)
182 federal appellate · 55 district · 332 state decisions — followed in 38 states
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Relationships
Relies on Chambers v. Maroney · United States v. Ross · South Dakota v. Opperman · Texas v. White
Most-quoted passages
The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 718 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“when police officers have probable cause to believe there is contraband inside an automobile that has been stopped on the road, the officers may conduct a warrantless search of the vehicle, even after it has been impounded and is in police custody.”
44 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“plainly inconsistent with our decisions in Chambers and Texas v. White .”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Cheatham v. State · Black v. State“Without attempting to refute the State's contention that this discovery gave the officers probable cause to believe there was contraband elsewhere in the vehicle, the [Michigan] Court of Appeals held that the absence of `exigent circumstances' precluded a warrantless search.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majoritye.g. Osban v. State
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.